


A Friend Indeed

by ExtraPenguin



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Jedi Lore (Star Wars), Mission Fic, Post-Episode: s04e13 Escape From Kadavo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27328369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/pseuds/ExtraPenguin
Summary: After their rescue of the colonists of Kiros, Ahsoka Tano's Master asks for her to be sent on a mission away from the front. She ends up being sent to the Deep Core with Master Plo Koon to investigate one of the first known locations of the Jedi Order, since abandoned.
Relationships: Plo Koon & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34
Collections: Fic In A Box





	A Friend Indeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EternalEclipse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/gifts).



“Hey, Snips,” Master Skywalker said. He smiled awkwardly at her and shifted his weight around. The behavior wasn't that far off from how he usually acted – but his eyes were still haunted from their infiltration mission on Zygerria.

“Master.” Her master winced. Kark, that had been the wrong thing to say. “Uh, you wanted to say something?” Ahsoka quickly asked.

“Yes!” Skywalker rubbed the back of his neck. “Obi-Wan and I have to stay at the Temple for a bit, but it's traditional for padawans to take occasional missions with other Jedi and then solo as part of their training, and you've certainly proven yourself to be competent and trustworthy enough to take this next step.” He smiled. “Master Plo's going on a mission not to a war zone while his ships get repaired. You should join him.”

“Sure thing, Skyguy. I'll go find him.”

Skywalker smiled. “Good. I'm sure you can handle it.”

Ahsoka grinned back. “Of course. May the Force be with you.”

“And with you as well,” Skywalker said, slightly distant.

“Make sure Master Obi-Wan gets a good night's sleep,” she called over her shoulder as she walked off in search of Master Plo. Master Skywalker looked a bit haunted as he waved, but he'd bounce back in no time. He always did.

She found Master Plo Koon standing at the top floor of the Temple, looking out the windows in silence. Before him, Coruscant thrummed and throbbed with the life-force of the billions of sentients who called it home: speeder lanes packed with the late afternoon crowds, searing holosigns advertising bars and cafés, people milling about on the walkways, in search of nothing and everything. It was utterly unlike Zygerria.

“Master Plo,” Ahsoka said after a moment. “Master Skywalker said I'd be going on a mission with you.”

He turned away from the window. “Yes,” he said, distant as if he'd been lost in his thoughts. Which – she understood Skyguy, and especially Obi-Wan and Rex, would need some time to recover from their previous mission, but piloting a fighter on Kadavo wasn't any different from piloting a fighter elsewhere, so something else must be up with him. Their mission?

Ahsoka furtively glanced around them. “Will I be briefed here or en route?” she quietly asked after confirming no-one was around.

“There is not much to brief,” Plo Koon replied. “The Jedi Order was formed tens of thousands of years ago, at the dawn of the Old Republic. The Code remains, but much has been forgotten over the years – including the location of our first temple. Scholars believe it was on either Ahch-To, Coruscant, Jedha, Ossus, or Tython. The Council believes that investigating the four abandoned old temples might yield clues on how to defeat Count Dooku.”

Ossus had been abandoned due to a nearby supernova irradiating it, and Ahsoka thought she'd heard someone mention Jedha somewhere, but Ahch-To and Tython she'd never heard of. “Will we go to all of them, or just one?”

“We're going to Tython. It's in the Deep Core, but quite close to Coruscant.”

On some level, Ahsoka must have been expecting a journey of a day or two, as if they'd be going to a Mid Rim world. To arrive around Teta in half an hour and then take only another hour traveling the shorter distance to hyperlaneless Tython jump by jump was jarring.

The planet itself was blue and clouded. The scanners picked up nothing but ice in various forms.

“So... Where's the temple supposed to be?”

“Lore speaks of a Force presence at the Meridional Ice Cap,” Plo Koon said. “Though it may be that the actual temple is elsewhere and the thing at the Meridional Ice Cap is unrelated.”

“Dark side?”

They entered the atmosphere. “It's close enough to Coruscant that we would have noticed.”

“So it's a Jedi shrine?”

“Whatever it is was made by the Jedi, but a lot can change in twenty-five thousand years, little 'Soka – the Jedi Order included.”

“It is hard to believe,” Ahsoka admitted. “Though you'll no doubt say the war has changed us.”

“The Order is not what it was when I was a padawan,” Plo Koon said. The flying conditions were degrading as they descended into a minor snowstorm, but Master Plo kept the ship steady. “It is not what it was when your Master Skywalker was a padawan, either, and that was only a few years ago.”

“Is making people believe things have always been this way some property of the temple on Coruscant?” Ahsoka asked, half in jest.

“The temple has a long history. Its weight is all the more heavy when few are present to bear it.” The ship started vibrating lightly. “Do the scanners show any good places to land?”

Craggy peaks, more craggy peaks, the cave entrance Plo Koon had marked as being of interest, what might have been a statue, something that was probably an iced-over lake. “Just next to that outcropping there,” Ahsoka said. “Hopefully it's lake shore, but if it's the lake, it should at least be shallow.”

“Setting down.”

The closer they got to the surface, the worse it got. The ship shook in the wind until the landing pads hit the snowy ground and sank in. The wind still hammered the ship, but they were still.

Plo Koon did a last check of the sensors. “It seems we're on solid ground. Well done, Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka preened and went to grab their winter gear. It might only be a short walk to the cave mouth, but the view outside did not look inviting in the least.

Wrapped up in warm cloaks, they left the ship. The cold air blasted Ahsoka in the face, ice hitting her skin like tiny needles. Her eyes watered in the gale only for the tears to freeze her lashes.

“This way!” Plo Koon shouted over the wind.

Ahsoka felt like her skin had turned to a solid wall of pain, but Plo Koon was a calm presence in the Force, and she was a Jedi: she did not need her eyes to follow him. Nor did she need to see to know the land – she only had to trust the Force.

They trod through the ice and thin layer of windswept snow. Ahsoka could feel each snowflake in the Force, picked up and tossed around by the wind, forming ever-shifting patterns on the ground eerily similar to sand dunes.

Then the wind fell away and they were embraced by rock. Ahsoka opened her eyes.

Well, she tried. Her eyes had frozen shut. It took a few moments to melt them open.

When she finally could see, she saw nothing but darkness. She lit her lightsaber; the walls came alive with an eerie green light. Her mind conjured demons into the moving shadows.

“Why would anyone build a temple to the Light Side here?” Ahsoka asked.

“This world was not always covered in ice,” Plo Koon said. “Perhaps when this structure was originally built, it resided in temperate grassland. Now come, what we seek lies at the bottom of this tunnel.”

Master Plo lit his lightsaber as well. Ahsoka wasn't sure if the presence of a second light source made things more or less creepy.

The tunnel – and it was a tunnel, its floor too smooth and height too even to be anything but intentional, even if millennia of frostheave and the stresses and strains of tectonic movement had cracked the floor and pitted the walls – twined around itself in a gentle spiral. It was as if they'd lifted the concept of time off their shoulders as they'd lifted their hoods off their heads in the still air.

Ahsoka glanced at her chrono: they'd been going down for less than an hour. It felt like forever and an instant in the glow of their lightsabers.

“The war has spread us thin,” Plo Koon suddenly said. “This shows in many ways. We have to reject the humanitarian missions the Order was – should be – known for, and when we send Jedi on missions, it is those who are available, not those who are best suited for the mission.”

He was trying to say something without saying something. Ahsoka had observed Master Obi-Wan do the same often. “You don't think we should've been sent to rescue the colonists from Kiros?” she guessed.

“Master Kenobi ... had no training for his role,” Plo Koon replied. “And Skywalker should not have been sent for other reasons.”

“Did you want someone less reckless?” Ahsoka asked with a frown. Master Plo wasn't usually that evasive.

Plo Koon went still for a moment before resuming his walk down. “So you do not know.”

“Know what?”

“It is not my place to tell.”

Ahsoka sighed. She hated it when adults refused to tell her something. “Then who should I ask? Master Skywalker?”

“Yes.”

The tunnel had cracked severely in some manner of earthquake. They had to pick their way through rubble and squeeze past a spot where the walls had collapsed to almost touch. By unspoken agreement, neither of them tried to clear it out.

After the rough patch had disappeared behind them in the long wind of the tunnel, Ahsoka said, “I was wondering why Master Skywalker was the one to speak to the Queen. Usually that's Master Obi-Wan's role.”

Again, Master Plo stiffened for a moment. “The Jedi Order will not see Anakin Skywalker in chains.”

“What-”

“It is not my place to tell,” Master Plo repeated with an air of finality.

“The great Jedi Order, all too willing to drop ominous hints but not to actually state what the kriff is going on.”

Amusement radiated off Master Plo's Force presence. “Language,” he said, though there wasn't even a hint of reproach to his voice.

“Sorry, Master Plo,” Ahsoka said.

The amusement didn't abate. Ahsoka's apology had been mostly rote, anyway. She didn't use such language around the initiates, and that was the important bit.

They picked their way through another rough patch – the ceiling had caved in partially – before either of them spoke again. “How go your studies in Togruti?” Plo Koon asked.

“I'd hoped to get some conversation practice in with the colonists from Kiros, but apparently it's only really spoken on Shili.” She was technically a native speaker, but she'd been in the Temple speaking Basic since the age of three. Anyone's skills would atrophy. She shrugged. “I guess I could ask to chat with Shaak Ti the next time our paths cross?”

“There are a few other Togruta in the Temple who're fluent in Togruti. I hear one of the new Padawans assisting in the Halls of Healing is quite good.”

“Hm.” Ahsoka let the information wash over her. She didn't like the Halls of Healing, but- If she had to go, perhaps she could use the time more productively. Or be distracted from her worries over her Master or Grandmaster, should either of them end up banged up badly enough to be unable to escape the healers.

Another pause, this one shorter. “I've actually started studying Kel Dor,” she offered to Master Plo's green-lit back and the interplay of green and blue light on the walls.

“Koh-too-yah, Ahsoka,” Plo Koon said with a smile on his voice obvious even through his deox mask.

“Koh-too-yah,” Ahsoka replied, then started on the basic topics she'd gotten to in the self-study program.

It was hard to tell time in the tunnel that twisted on itself, but Ahsoka had asked for directions to a variety of bathrooms, spaceports, and various cultural landmarks, booked a ticket from Dorin to Iridonia, and ordered a veritable feast for a large group, all of whom had conflicting dietary needs. She was trying to recall the phrasing for complimenting someone's deox mask to ask after their clan affiliation when the tunnel suddenly leveled out and straightened.

“Is that light?” Ahsoka whispered.

“So it seems.”

They turned off their lightsabers in silent agreement and crept forward. A blue-green haze lit their way.

A niggling feeling chased at Ahsoka. Whatever Master Skywalker's mysterious and no doubt tragic past was, she really should've asked about it already. She'd been his padawan for over a year! What excuse did she have?

She was too slow, too weak, had seen so many clones get killed. She saw the last moments of all too many soldiers under her command and thought she should have been better. Better so she could have saved them. She-

“Ahsoka,” Plo Koon said, jolting her out of her thoughts. “There seems to be an ancient artefact in here.”

“I think it's affecting me,” Ahsoka admitted.

“It is very powerful.” Plo Koon commed Coruscant and was patched through. Ahsoka wondered at actually getting a signal through the rock, even with the ship as a relay, but then realized that they were close enough to Coruscant even a whisper would carry to the Council's ears.

Would the librarians know about whatever it was? It was old enough there might not be anything in the archives.

The sense of regretting intensified. Ahsoka crept further away.

Plo Koon's comm pinged. Jocasta Nu herself told them it was possibly the Martyrium of Frozen Tears, a confessional of solid kyberite, and she would very much like pictures.

“Did we even bring a camera?” Ahsoka asked when Master Nu's image had fizzled out.

“The wristcomms have holographic scanning technology,” Plo Koon quietly said. “Maybe we could use that?”

Ahsoka slapped her forehead. “Of course! The wristcomm scanning optics aren't set up for anything but short-range scans, but I bet I could rig them to work up to ten meters-”

She'd slipped off her comm unit, and ten minutes of determined tinkering later it worked adequately enough for its intended purpose. They wouldn't get texture on any ceilings high above, but anything within fifteen meters would be present. “Done,” she declared.

“Then I believe we have a Martyrium to visit,” Plo Koon said.

They resumed their journey across the fault lines and unevennesses of the tunnel. It ran mostly straight before making a right-angle turn. Immediately after the turn, the tunnel ended into a vast cavern.

The ceiling was definitely more than fifteen meters high, Ahsoka thought as she pushed a button to make her wristcomm scan. It was jagged with stalactites. None looked in immediate danger of falling, thankfully, and the ground bore no evidence of prior crashing: it was a smooth floor, concentric rings of pale tile around the center of the room.

 _That must be the confessional,_ Ahsoka thought.

It resembled the roots and trunk of a vast tree, and merged seamlessly into the stalactites that hung above. In the center of the more open bottom was an eerie blue-green glow that cast harsh shadows around the room and whispered with a seductive power.

“Is this the Dark Side?” Ahsoka asked.

“No. It is merely the Force.”

“Okay.”

Ahsoka made her way around it, documenting it from every angle and making sure to scan up as high as she could. She didn't touch the structure or broach the perimeter the root-pillars drew.

“Was this made for anything?” Ahsoka asked. “Or is this wholly natural?”

“The earliest Jedi cults confessed their sins to the Force itself here, but what records survive make no mention of whether it's natural or constructed.”

“I guess it looks sort of natural,” Ahsoka mused as she stepped slightly closer to one of the root-pillars. She'd upgraded the wristcomm, but the scanner would still do much better close up. A few more steps and she'd have done a full circuit.

“Indeed.” Plo Koon uncrossed his arms and strode over. To Ahsoka's shock, though, he didn't stop next to her but walked past into the enclosure of the confessional.

The glow did not change, the structure did not twist to ensnare him within it, and nothing made any indication of exploding anytime soon. Ahsoka let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

“What are you doing, Master Plo?” she asked.

He was sitting cross-legged in front of the source of the glow. “Confessing my failings to the Force,” he calmly replied. “Would you like to join?”

She stared at him in a moment of indecision. “Sure,” she said.

She entered the enclosure slowly, turning around to scan it from the inside. The column was hollow, and seemed to stretch much beyond the ceiling, to where even the blue-green light had faded to nothing.

The Force felt no different inside the root-pillars than outside them. It didn't change when she sat down opposite Master Plo, either.

 _Tell,_ a voice that was not a voice came to her. _Share your regrets._

Ahsoka was not sure this was wise, but she could hear Master Plo speaking Kel Dor to it in a low voice. She tried not to eavesdrop.

_Share your regrets._

“I wish I could've saved more people,” she quietly said. “Maybe Matchstick would've lived if he hadn't hit a Neebray Manta. Tag, too.” She spoke the names of all the people they'd lost, Denal and Koho and Redeye and Mixer, about how she wished she could have helped them and their brothers.

Then it was as if the floodgates had opened: she confessed every resentment, every insecurity she'd felt as Master Skywalker's padawan, both about his instruction and the expectations placed on her. She continued on to every grudge she'd held and error she'd made as an initiate, from the rude words she'd said to fellow initiates since cut down by droids as a teenager to the hazy memory of hogging the ball in a game of pushball as a toddler.

She trickled to a halt as she came to her earliest memories. The food at the Temple, slightly odd to her young tastes. Wondering at the scale of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

Master Plo's clawed hand reaching out to her as he knelt before her. No, she had nothing to regret there.

She noticed Master Plo had finished. He was watching her with the same kind expression he'd worn when he'd found her. The deox mask covered much, but his face still moved in ways one could pick up with practice, and the warm haze of his emotions could be felt in the Force.

Unwilling to break the odd mood that now suffused the Martyrium of Frozen Tears, Ahsoka nodded and rose. She trailed Plo Koon out of the structure and back to the edge of the room, scanning all the while.

They stood for a moment in silence, the tunnel they'd entered through at their backs and the solid kyberite structure in front of them. “Why do you think this place was abandoned?”

“It is hard to say,” Master Plo replied. “I suspect that when the ancient Jedi learned how to release their emotions to the Force unassisted, the structure became obsolete. Then, when an ice age hit the world, there would be little to keep them here.”

Ahsoka supposed it made sense. She did feel like she did after a successful meditation session.

It had been a long while since she'd had a successful meditation session. “Do you think it was used as a teaching aid for younglings?”

“It's possible. Were you thinking of something?”

She suddenly had an overwhelming urge to squirm and dismiss her idea without sharing it, but if her time as Anakin Skywalker's padawan had taught her anything, it was guts and gall. “The war makes it harder to meditate,” she said, “but I felt a sense of serenity in there. Maybe the Jedi could start using it again? It's pretty close to Coruscant, too, and not in any danger of being overrun by Seppies,” she added.

“All points in its favor,” Plo Koon agreed. “Very well. It seems we have a report to make for the Council.”

They turned and started the long journey to the surface. As the glow faded and they had to turn on their lightsabers to see, some of the sense of peace Ahsoka had felt fell away.

Some, however, lingered. The war was still raging at the ends of the galaxy, but this place here had left a touch of peace in her heart, and she intended to share it with all who needed it.


End file.
